wiring had charged the metal window frame.
"'I can't do it!' she shouted.
" 'You'll have to,' I said. 'Otherwise we'll
be buried alive.'
"On the third try she went out, and I went
through behind her. I was so keyed up that I
barely felt the electricity.
"The water swept us maybe a hundred
yards before we could crawl to a house on a
high lawn. I couldn't understand why I was
unable to stand up. Then I discovered my
pajamas were filled with heavy gravel. My
legs were cut and bleeding. But we were safe."
Nightmare on the Freeway
The experience of Edward R. Jennings of
Fullerton contained a peculiarly modern ele
ment of nightmare. Mr. Jennings was driving
on the Pomona Freeway when an unseen force
seized his car and carried it sideways onto the
median strip! The cliff above the highway had
collapsed (page 568).
"I hadn't seen the landslide come down, and
I felt as though I were in a boat being tossed
about in a storm," Mr. Jennings told me.
Then there was the Soledad Canyon inci
dent, a Hollywood terror movie come alive.
It centered on Ralph D. Helfer's ranch on the
Santa Clara River. Africa, U.S.A., as Mr. Hel
fer calls his place, rents exotic animals to
makers of movies and TV films. You may
have seen some of them: the tiger in the Esso
commercial; the Ford Motor Company cougar.
The Santa Clara inundated Africa, U.S.A.,
and many of Mr. Helfer's great carnivores
were free in the night to roam the country
side, where possibly 10,000 people live within
a 15-mile radius. One can imagine the panic
had the Helfer neighbors known the facts.
But they didn't, for all communications with
the ranch were out.
Actually, there was little danger.
"When the water reached the cages," Mr.
Helfer said, "we tranquilized what untamed
animals we had. Unfortunately, we lost a doz
en-lions, tigers, a jaguar-when a dam burst
before we could carry them out.
"After we'd attended to this sad business,
we turned to the rescue of our gentle animals,
Children's treasures clutterJohn Caufield's
roof, tossed there out of the way of the mud
slide. As an epitaph to the mud's grim work,
a book at lower left displays the title Lost
Worlds. Ladder offers the family an escape
to the roof-a vantage point that a volun
teer has reached by walking up eave-high
debris on the other side of the house.
EKTACHROMES
( N.G .S.
Mud took the wheel of this driverless
station wagon, sweeping it a quarter of a
mile and smashing it into a garage. A vol
unteer worker checks damage to the auto.
Mired in muck, a bicycle awaits rescue
from the quagmire that choked Glendora.
563